Maybe startups can fix higher education with Tade Oyerinde from Campus

16 Jul 2024 (5 months ago)

Introduction (0s)

Higher education is facing issues like skyrocketing admissions and falling enrollment.
Tade Oyerinde from Campus, a fully online community college, believes they have a solution.
Campus.edu is a fully accredited two-year online college.
Students learn from top professors from prestigious universities like Princeton, UCLA, and NYU.
The federal government pays for the tuition for most students through Pell Grants, so the majority don't pay anything out of pocket and none take on student loans.
After two years, students transfer to a four-year school with no debt.
Tade Oyerinde saw that the higher education system was not working effectively.
He wanted to create a new approach to community college, focusing on the actual learning and classes.

Tade Oyerinde founded Campus Wire in 2016 to provide online learning software for colleges and universities.
While demonstrating his software at UCLA, Oyerinde discovered the "adjunct faculty crisis," where many professors, especially adjuncts, face financial struggles and job insecurity.
Community colleges face a "low completion rate crisis," with graduation rates below 30%, despite 82% of students enrolling with the intention of obtaining a bachelor's degree.
Oyerinde proposes a solution involving software-driven community colleges with low tuition fees, allowing students to complete the first two years of college without debt and learning from professors from top schools.
Campus, a higher education startup founded by Oyerinde, overcame the accreditation barrier by acquiring an existing accredited community college, MTI College, in Sacramento.
The acquisition of MTI College allowed Campus to quickly enter the community college market and offer online learning, which has become increasingly important post-pandemic.

Campus serves both students and professors.
Professors are paid double the average college rate, $8,000 per class.
There are about 270 professors on the waitlist to teach with Campus.
Most professors teach at top 100 schools, 95% at top 50 schools.
The name "Campus" attracts professors because it feels like the future of higher education.
Initially, it was difficult to attract students due to skepticism and a history of bad actors in the higher education space.
As the program has grown and produced graduates, it has become easier to attract students.

Campus offers online business administration associate degrees with plans to introduce concentrations in the future.
The curriculum provides students with fundamental business skills and knowledge applicable to various career paths, particularly for Gen Z and Gen Alpha interested in entrepreneurship.
Initial fundraising challenges were overcome by targeting investors who shared the vision of making college more useful, skills-embedded, accessible, efficient, and adaptable.
Early support came from Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator, who recognized the need for a tech-enabled, adaptive college experience responsive to the changing job landscape.
Campus founder Tade Oyerinde received support from Trey, Peter, and Joe Lale for his startup.
Peter T, previously critical of college, became a supporter of Campus.
Campus has gained significant traction and inbound interest over the past year.

Venture funding was chosen due to the high-risk, high-reward nature of the business.
The company aimed to capture a small sliver of the market and build a massive company.
Sought venture capitalists who were interested in significant outcomes and fundamentally changing education in America.
Silicon Valley was seen as the ideal location for funding moonshots.
Campus was launched before COVID-19 as CampusWire, a Zoom for higher ed product.
The pandemic led to exponential growth in 2020.
The company pivoted from a paid online learning software to a free model due to the belief that the pandemic-driven demand for online learning was temporary.

The pandemic highlighted the effectiveness and engagement of online learning, leading to increased interest and training among professors for remote teaching options.
Tade Oyerinde, with a family background in education, gained early exposure to online learning through homeschooling in the 90s.
Inspired by "The Social Network," Oyerinde created the viral app Uni Roulette during his university years, attracting investment and hundreds of thousands of users.
Despite initial success, Uni Roulette faced challenges in sustaining exponential growth due to its fad nature, leading to a shift in focus towards building basic apps for universities.
This unplanned venture into the education technology (EdTech) space aligned with Oyerinde's interests and background.

The speaker shares personal anecdotes about how external factors, such as movies and random events, influenced their career choices.
Hiring for a startup in the education sector requires a balance between expertise from traditional education backgrounds and operational excellence from tech companies.
Campus, an education startup, aims to combine traditional academia with practical skills training to prepare students for the job market.
They offer a three-step program: helping students discover their purpose, creating a personalized plan, and providing the necessary skills and knowledge.
Graduates receive a credential or degree and many transfer to four-year universities without student loans.
Campus plans to expand its program offerings and scale up its faculty network to provide excellent support to students.
Their goal is to make their services accessible to anyone in America and eventually the world, providing the support needed to build the life they want.